Chapter 6

What are you doing back?" "Are you better? Look how thin you are! How come you're out of the Infirmary? I was going to come visit next week." Wren smiled and shook her head. "Just got out. I came to pick a few things up." Marla's face shifted. She was worried now. "Is it Damon again? Did he do something to you?" Her voice was full of dislike. "And that Selene. She's had her eye on this place for a while. Keeps talking about clearing your things out." "If I hadn't stopped her, she'd have torn this den apart already." Wren paused for a second. So Selene had been scheming about the den for a while. Marla was only getting angrier. "That girl looks all soft and sweet. Behind the scenes it's all calculation." "You're fighting for your life in the Infirmary. Meanwhile she's over here picking through what's yours." "She stuffed your things into the storage room one piece at a time and tried to move her own things in." Marla snorted. "Every piece she brought in, I chucked out. If she laid a finger on what's yours, I said I'd fight her." Her voice went higher. "She went and cried to Damon about me." "I gave him a piece of my mind too." "Told him he'd forgotten his own pack, forgotten who was at his side in the hardest years, who ate with him when there was nothing to eat." Wren listened in silence. Something ached in her chest. In her last life, after she died, Damon took care of the rites for her, but kept it small. Probably afraid of getting in the way of his new bonding ceremony. Only Marla went to the Infirmary and dumped a bag of trash on Damon's head. "You animal. Wren was with you for years and years. She's sick for three years and you can't wait to find yourself a new one? Are you even a wolf anymore?" "She's gone, but I'm still here. Every time I see you, I'll hit you. You and that Selene trash, neither of you deserves a peaceful death. I'm going straight to the Pack news feeds. I'll make sure everyone spits on your name. I'll make sure neither of you sleeps." Marla had made herself sick afterwards. But Wren was already reborn by then. She didn't know what happened next. "Don't worry. As long as Marla is here, I'll look after you." "Thank you, Marla. How come the den never got cleared after that?" she asked quietly. Marla sighed. "Damon changed his mind later." "He said he wouldn't touch this place. Wouldn't let Selene move in." "Turned around and got her a bigger place in the Central Territory instead." Marla curled her lip. "She was mad about it at first. Said she wanted this one." "But when she saw the new place was bigger and she could decorate it herself, she shut up." Wren listened and nodded. She thought she understood. Maybe Marla's words had shaken something loose in Damon — a little bit of guilt. Or maybe he just didn't want to keep fighting. Suddenly, she didn't feel like there was anything left here to pack up. Keeping the things didn't keep the wolf. A spotless den didn't make it her home anymore. "Marla." She took Marla's hand and smiled at her. "I'm giving the den back to him." "I'm not coming back." Marla paused. "Wren. Are you really done with him?" Wren nodded. "I'm done." Marla sighed and patted her hand. "Done is better. That wolf stopped being good enough for you a long time ago." "When you're better, I'll introduce you to someone a hundred times better than him." Wren nodded but didn't agree to anything. Marla walked her all the way to the gate of the complex, making her promise over and over to take care of herself, to call if she needed anything. The car pulled up at the curb. Wren got in. She turned and looked at the building one last time. "Damon. Between us — this goes to the end." Wren flew out to Highland Territory and rented a small cliff-side inn with a wall of windows that looked onto open sky. The air was thin and clean. Most days she stayed in bed wrapped in a blanket, watching sun climb across the tiled roof, watching dusk eat the mountains. On the good days she walked down to the water. She ate a flower-pastry from the corner vendor and sat on a flat rock listening to a young couple arguing over their mating photos. She remembered Damon asking her, years ago, whether when they were old they'd come to a place like this — plant flowers, raise a pup, bake bread together. The future had felt easy to reach then. Now it was only her and the dull deep ache the Silver Blight kept in her marrow. The innkeeper was an old Pack Elder named Arlan Whitmore. White hair, slight stoop, eyes that missed nothing. A camera always slung at his shoulder. He took photographs of cloud and wildflower and every guest who would let him. On her fifth morning he knocked with a cup of warm chrysanthemum tea. "You should come out," he said, glancing at the row of pills on her side table. "Sun is good for you."